Connecticut western news., 1887-12-07
A FALLEN MONARCH.
Rapid Determination of the Buf-
 falo in America.
Only a Few Left Where Millions
 Once Roamed.

When the Union Pacific Railway was built from Omaha to Cheyenne, in the years 1ss6-7, says William T. Hornaday, in the Cosmopolitan, it cut through the center of the great buffalo range, and from it as base of operations the hunters swarmed north and south, slay- ing as they went. Thus was the great herd cut in twain never to be reunited The Staked Plain of Texas presently be- came the geographical center of the southern herd, and Glendive, Montana, that of the northern. In short time the building of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, and the Kansas Paci- fic railways thoroughly opened up all parts of the southern buffalo country, and in 1879 arose demand for buffalo robes that proved fatal to the species. The war of extirmination began immediately, and according to the statistics that have been gathered and published by Colonel Dodge the years 1923 and 4 saw the destruction of over four million three hundred and seventy three thousand seven hundred and thirty buffalo on the southern range. Thus was this great herd slaughtered out of existence in about three years time. The survivors sought refuge in the desolate wastes of the Staked Plain; but even there the relentless hunters still pursued them, when bull robes sold for one dollar and twenty-five cents each, and the cows were slaughtered for skins that were worth the paltry sum of only 65 cents. That was bad enough, and entirely too bad, but if could call up before you vision of the hundreds of thousands of dead buffalo that were heartlessly slain for their tongues or their humps, or for s'sport" CD alone, you would sicken at the sight. Never in the history of the whole animal kingdom has there been such another bloody and cruel carnage, or one that yielded so little in proportion to the total value involved.
 The Northern Pacific railway was opened for traffic from Glendive east. ward in 1880, and the buffalo hunters made an assault in force on the northern herd. Buffalo hides were shipped east ward by the railway and the Missouri river by tens of thousands, until 1884, when the work of extermination was complete. In 1885 not single fresh hide was in the market, and in the year following only two rewarded the inquiries of the buyers. The buffalo were gone forever, not only from the United States, but from the British Possessions as we'll. Last year the largest fur house in Montreal asked from thirty to forty dol lars each for robes, and some of the leading furriers in New York had none | at all.
 Another fact that stares us unpleas : antly in the face is that with the excep- ton of the wild buffalo in National Park, all of which will eventually either wander out or be frightened out and killed, unless the Park is inclosed by a barbed wire fence in time to prevent it, the National Government has not single buffalo on any of it's reservations, nor anywhere else in charge of any one in it's employ. In spite of the attention that is being paid In other quarters to the development of our animal products no steps whatever have been taken to preserve bos Amcri- canus from total annihilation. At all events, it now seems reasonably certain that in three years more there will not be a wild buffalo remaining on the whole continent of North America, ex- cept in the National Park.
 Up to 1866 the whole of the great western region from the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains eastward to the borders of civilization, and from the Sas- katchewan to the Staked Plains of Texas was occupied by buffalo. Within our own Territory the number of head alive in 1868 must have been about eight millions. Even as late as 1868 MT. William Blackmore declares that in making journey of one hundred and twenty miles from Ellsworth to Sheri- dan they passed through an almost un- broken herd of buffalo. In those days that tract of country would be literally black with buffalo, and it seemed as if they never could be all "kilied off"